3 data centre capacity planning best practices you must know

Capacity planning is just one of many activities required in maintaining a data centre, and it is perhaps the most critical to the facility's survival.

Managing your business data centre is a vital element of operations because that's where your computer and network equipment is situated. Companies may store data, process the information, and distribute, or transfer data back to the company as needed, at and from the data centre.

Monitoring and optimizing your data centre may have a significant influence on company performance, and without effective capacity planning, you may experience inefficiencies and disruptions that influence application and server performance.

It is tough to opt for data centre capacity planning. Especially to ensure the triumph of any business - if you're a cloud provider, the success of your consumers' businesses - is totally reliant on your ability to grow IT resources rapidly, effectively, and safely. To assist you in this attempt, the following are a few essential best practices for data centre capacity planning:

1. Recognize that capacity planning is an ongoing process

Data centre capacity planning is not a job that is completed on a month-wise, quarter-wise, or yearly-wise. It is a never-ending task that influences the dailyaccomplishment of data centre operations.

This is mostly due to the requirement to actively monitor daily utilization of IT resources and backs infrastructure (cooling, environmental monitoring, security, and so on) for impromptu consumption fluctuations. In today's IT ecosystem, capacity requirements might alter instantly-so there's no need to prepare reports months or even weeks in advance. Data centre operators must be prepared to handle capacity shifts very instantaneously.

Additionally, prior to data centre administrators can prepare for future acquisitions of new equipment, they must be thoroughly familiar with their present consumption metrics. This entails having access to this information for a long period of time, rather than just limited reports. Managers must have constant access to the whole spectrum of data centre performance in order for this to be achievable.

2. Break down barriers between business stakeholders and IT

The channels of communication between data centre employees and business stakeholders are generally very narrow. Bridging this gap is one of the most effective methods to accomplish successful data centre capacity planning.

To achieve optimal data centre planning, top IT managers should align their data centre forecasting perspectives with the company's goals. IT leaders can better estimate growth in their data centres by knowing a company's business growth plan.

Similarly, any schism between data centre facilities (those in charge of power consumption and environmental management) and IT administrators of businesses (those in charge of racks, cabinets, servers, as well as other network equipment) would impede a data centre's capability to adapt to variations in aggregated capacity, both now and into the foreseeable future.

3. Powerful DCIM is essential

A data centre that lacks data centre infrastructure management (DCIM) software is analogous to a machine that lacks an operating system. Furthermore, without DCIM, capacity planning is virtually unfeasible.

One of the key roles of DCIM is the collection and analysis of metrics throughout the whole data centre, such as ambient conditions, power usage, the state of equipment in operation, and much more. On a daily basis, this assists data centre personnel in maintaining operational efficiency by detecting sources of waste or possible reasons for downtime beforehand. Every one of these insights may be applied to better capacity planning.

Advanced DCIM solutions make it simple for data centre operators to accomplish capacity planning procedures. This involves determining how the addition of new servers would affect temperature and power usage, as well as the capacity of a facility's infrastructure to manage unanticipated increases in network traffic, among other things.

Maintaining or implementing data centre capacity planning may be challenging, but it's something that DCIM can help with.

STT GDC India is fully committed to meeting the rising demands of the Indian market and businesses. Our commitment defines STT GDC India's tactical plan to allow higher performance, increased dependability, greater data security, and fostering a culture of sustainability throughout all our data centres across India. STT GDC India is amongst the largest colocation service provider in India, with 21 data centres spread over nine main cities.